Towards collaborative change: connecting the textile industry

Abstract

In recent years, we have become increasingly aware of the vast impact of the fast fashion and textile industry. Over the years the fashion industry has been abundantly criticised over its limited consideration of social and environmental issues and the widespread impact that these have. By now, textile creation itself has a larger carbon footprint than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. The biggest change can be made within the creation of these textiles. This is where Byborre and the Window of Textile opportunities (WoTO) come into play.
This project is executed in collaboration with Byborre: a frontrunner in creating transparent and responsible textiles and trying to change the way the textile industry operates. As part of their mission they launched WoTO: a platform and exposition that connects Byborre’s transparent textile supply-chain in order to collaboratively solve the industry’s sustainability challenges and aims to educate on responsible textile creation and use. This raised the following question that served as the kick-off for the project:
“How can WoTO educate, inspire and connect textile users, academic and industry professionals in order to drive collaborative, transparent and responsible textile innovation and creation?”
In order to find out, the project took a user-centred approach: the user’s perspective is leading in order to gain insight. User research consisting out of qualitative interviews, user-journeys and persona’s along with literature research on open and networked innovations was performed. The analysis of this research phase shows the complexity of interdisciplinary collaboration and the problems that users experience within WoTO:
The concept of WoTO lacks clarity, resulting in different interpretations and expectations of the platform. The network partners experience a lack of guidance, facilitation and moderation which makes it hard to keep overview and manage expectations. Due to a lack of, - or unsuitable collaborative systems and tools it becomes challenging for the partners to stay involved, connected and aligned. This consequently results in an unclear narrative for the visitors.
Based on ideation, co-creation and evaluation with stakeholders a service design vision for WoTO is created to alleviate this problem:
The service design offers WoTO partners an accessible way to engage with the Window of Textile Opportunities and stimulates and facilitates interdisciplinary working and communication within, and outside of the WoTO network. Decreasing the gap between the textile supply-chain and brands/consumers. By doing so aiming to strengthen WoTO’s primary functions: to forge interdisciplinary connections & educate on responsible creation and transparency.
It does so by offering guidance, orchestration and structure through various touch-points that support the the newly constructed collaborative model and user flow. These touch-points can be attributed to four themes:

Stimulate engagement
Create uniformity in collaboration
Guide towards alignment and change
Decrease the gap between the supply-chain and brands/consumers

To implement the service successfully a roadmap is given to help prioritise activities for the short term implementation. In order to make this possible it is recommended to further develop and test the service and keep the partners involved in this process.
Ultimately, active partner orchestration and community management is essential to WoTO’s operations and interdisciplinary work. If not performed, partners can’t align and the service won’t be able facilitate its purpose.